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This Man CHOSE To Take His Wife’s Surname After Marriage And Shattered All Stereotypes

byApurva Chikhale
9th March 2017
3 minute read

Girls, those of you who are in serious relationships or planning on getting married, you must have had this conversation with your partners. The typical questions like, “How would you feel like cooking breakfast on some days?”, “How about if the time comes, you take care of the kids while I go to the office?”, “How about you have the dinner ready on the days you get home early?”, and etc, etc! Well, I am guessing, some of the men would even agree to all of this, but what happens when you are actually in those situations? Well, the time will tell!

Feminism is not about doing what a man does, it is about equality. And often, treating each other equally lies in the small gestures that you make.

For this lovely couple Kermin Bhot and Abhishek Mande-Bhot, who got married about 4 years back, the husband changed his last name to his wife’s last name.

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“A little after returning from our honeymoon four years ago, my husband, Abhishek, broke an important piece of news to his parents—he’d be taking my last name. While we waited for some form of judgement from either parent, all we got was a long drawn out ‘Okay’ from his dad. Even as we waited for him to complete what we thought would be the beginning of a long monologue, he didn’t say a thing. Much to his credit, not only did he leave it at that, he even asked Abhishek how he was proposing to go about it.”

 

Kermin is a Parsi and Abhishek, a Maharashtrian. Kermin says that though the culture they were brought up in was poles apart, they share the same set of values which helped them bond!

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“My husband and I have an inter-religious marriage. He’s a Hindu, while I’m a Parsi—two communities as far apart as they can get. I was raised in a Parsi household in South Mumbai on a staple of American and British pop culture and he was born and raised in the distant suburbs of the city in a middle-class Maharashtrian household. Add to that the fact that I was older and earning more than him and one might think we had a recipe for disaster. But while there were differences, there was also a lot of common ground—our core beliefs and thoughts were the same.”

 

She talks about Abhishek’s passion for women’s rights, how it is a subject which is close to his heart, and how changing his last name was his CHOICE!

“Also, I suspect Abhishek’s education in women’s rights and the fact that he has always been surrounded by strong women made it easier for him to accept the age and salary factor, as well as the fact that I didn’t need a knight in shining armour to rescue me. He is very passionate about women’s rights and at one point he would go to lengths trying to explain why this was important. Over the years, though, he’s given up explaining. To journalists who interview him, he says he changed his name because he wanted to. He says that he had the option of continuing with his own name or choosing to take mine and he chose the latter. It was really quite as simple as that, he insists.”

 

Kermin talks about the concept of CHOICE in this modern era and it is worth reading,

“The concept of choice is a complex one but one that is the cornerstone of human civilisation. Most of us (ie liberals) like to believe that accepting someone’s right to choose is pretty darned easy. But when that someone chooses a narrative that isn’t in line with our liberal ideologies…ah that’s when the narrative becomes a little complicated, doesn’t it? We will fight for women who want to be independent but when the same women want to hit the beach in a burkini…we catch ourselves squirming in our seats.”

 

Abhishek is like an idol for all the men today. Yes, you do not need to change your name to show that you treat her equally but it is just a metaphor for what he believes in. But let there be your own unique ways of showing equality towards every woman. It always starts with the small things. And the small things do make a big difference!

Source: Yahoo News

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